Deathbird Stories

on top of a mound of dead meat.

He was still sitting there, a few minutes later, not quite believing what he had done, when the prowl car’s searchlight speared him.

Norman Mogart scrambled to his knees and scuttled around the car. He dropped the pipe—which was now sticky—and crouching low, ran for his life. He ran into a man coming out of a narrow doorway leading up to cold- water flats, and caromed off him. He threw the man away from him and ran up Hudson Street. He kept running, with the squad car behind him, siren shrieking, gumball machine flickering angry red, searchbeam jabbing for him. He ran into Jane Street and kept going till he found a doorway. He ducked into the doorway and ran up a flight of stairs. And another flight. And another. And then he climbed a ladder and came out through a trapdoor on the roof of a Greenwich Village tenement. It was a roof that locked with other roofs, and he fled across the roofs, catching himself in wash hung on poles-and-rope, and screamed because he didn’t know what it was.

Then he found a fire escape, and clattered down the iron steps till he came to the drop-ladder, and it squeaked rustily, and he climbed down, dropping into another alley. Then he ran up another street, and onto Seventh Avenue, and across Seventh Avenue, dodging between cars. Then he was on another street. and he walked with head bowed, hands in topcoat pockets, praying he had lost them.

Light pooled on the sidewalk, and he looked up.

The light came from a trip lamp in the window of the store, and the sign it illuminated said:

ESCAPE INSIDE

Norman Mogart hesitated only a moment. He pulled open the door, and stepped into the shop. It was empty. There was a brown, leathery, wizened little man with pointed ears standing in the exact center of the empty shop.

Yes, the shop was one of those.

“You’re early,” said the little man.

Norman Mogart was suddenly frightened. There was the unmistakable rattle of lunacy in the little man’s voice. He stared for a long moment, feeling his gorge rise. Then he turned and reached out for the doorknob, knowing it was just there, under his questing fingers. There was no door.

“You’re almost ninety seconds early,” the little man murmured. “We’ll have to wait, or throw everything out of phase.”

Norman Mogart backed up kept backing up, backed through the space where the door should have been, the wall should have been, the sidewalk outside the shop should have been, the street should have been. They weren’t there. He was still inside the shop, whose dimensions seemed to expand as he moved. “You better let me out of here, crazy old man,” Norman quavered.

“Ah. It’s time.” The little old man hurried toward Norman. Norman turned and ran. Across a faceless, empty plain of existence. He kept running. There were no rises, no dips, no features to the surrounding terrain. It was as though he were in some enormous television studio set of limbo, running and running across an empty plain.

Finally, he slipped, exhausted, to the floor of the shop, and the little old man scampered up to him. “Ah. Fine. Now it’s time.”

He sat down cross-legged before Norman Mogart. Norman noticed with some alarm that though the little old man was sitting in a lotus position, quite comfortably, there was almost a foot of empty air between his bottom and the floor. The little man was sitting on the air.

Norman shut his eyes tightly. The little old man began talking to Norman as though he had just entered the shop, not as though he had been ninety seconds early.

“Welcome, Mr. Mogart. So you want to escape. Well, that’s what I sell here. Escape. Inside.”

Norman opened his eyes.

“Who are you?”

“A humble shopkeeper.”

“No, c’mon now, who are you?”

“Well, if you press me…”

The little man shimmered, and changed form. Norman shrieked. The form shimmered again, became the little old man. “Will you settle for what I’m showing you?”

Norman bobbled his head eagerly.

“Ah. Well, then, do you or do you not wish to escape, Mr. Mogart? I can guarantee that if you refuse my offer, the police will apprehend you in a matter of minutes.”

Norman hesitated only a second, then nodded.

“Ah. Good. Then we have an arrangement. And, with all my heart, I thank you.” Norman had only a moment to consider the peculiar tone in the little old man’s voice.

Then he began to dissolve.

He looked down and saw his legs beginning to fade away. Slowly. Without pain. “Wait a second, wait hold it!” Norman implored. “Are you a demon? A devil, some kind of thing like that? Am I going to Hell? Hey, wait a minute, if I’m going to Hell, I shoulda made a bargain…what do I get?…Hey, hold on, I’m fading away….Are you a gnome or an elf, or what?…Hey, what are you…!?!”

All that was left in the shop were Norman’s eyes, his ears, his lower lip and a patch of hair. And even as these faded, the little old man said, “You can call me Simon.”

And then, like the Cheshire cat, Norman Mogart faded away completely, hallucinating for an instant that the little old man had added, “Or Peter. It doesn’t matter….”

At first, in that painful introductory moment upon returning to consciousness, Norman Mogart knew only that he was looking straight up. He was lying on his back, in a springy bed of some growth, the .30-06 Husqvarna still held at high-port across his chest and one shoulder—but he was flat-out on his back. As that first moment stretched like warm taffy, drawing itself out until it had become one minute or five or ten, strange thoughts faded away: thoughts of another life, of a pain that burned in him, a pain that was now gone, to be replaced by a pain of quite another sort, of a woman, of running, of a little man…of an image that faded faded faded away to be replaced by…what? His senses crept timorously back to him, each carrying an allotted burden of new memories, replacing those old ones, now fading and gone; depositing the new memories in suddenly cleared spaces, and they fit snugly, as though they belonged, settling to rest in his mind.

He was staring straight up, through the interlaced boughs of half a dozen jacarandas, and while he lay there, senses settling carefully back in their niches, he dwelled on flesh that faded and how lovely the blossoms seemed.

Had it been night, in a cold place? Here it was day, and warm. So warm. Had it rained here? Yes.

It had been raining. Heavily, he supposed, for the ground on which he lay gave off a moist and repellent squishing when he moved; his clothes were soaked through to the skin; his hair lay matted along his forehead; the stock and barrel of the hunting rifle were beaded with rain that had clashed with cosmoline and encysted itself.

He realized, finally, that the knapsack was still in place on his back, that he must have fallen straight back when he collapsed, and that now it was a painful hump which forced him to lie in a tortured arched condition. He slipped sidewise, and received immediate ease from the pain.

Still he looked up, seeing the huge leafy fronds that had collected their water greedily, and seeing the strange birds that came to slake their thirst at those informal watering-places. One bird he saw…

He had never known it, true so true; he had hardly lent credence to the native stories: he had heard it was so, that there were jungle birds of brilliant plumage whose colors ran in the rain, but he had snickered at the thought. Very often, too often {and if once too often, then he was a fool on a fool’s errand!), the natives were like children, much rather believing their fancy-made-up tales than the truth. Yet here it was, above him, nonchalant, and here—in this wonderland that was certainly no Wonderland—it was true. So who were the children, after all?

He stared up at the wild-eyed huge-billed creature and saw its colors, like a Madras print, running, flowing,